Former Twitter employee found guilty of sharing personal user information and spying for Saudi Arabia
A former Twitter employee was convicted on Tuesday by a jury in federal court of six charges related to accusations that he spied on the company’s users for Saudi Arabia.
While at Twitter, Ahmad Abouammo, 44, managed media partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa. He developed relationships with prominent individuals in the region, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars and a luxury watch from a top adviser to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. In return, prosecutors said, he shared the personal user information of dissidents with Saudi officials.
The jury convicted Mr. Abouammo of two counts of wire fraud or conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, one count of falsifying records and one count of acting as an agent of a foreign government without properly disclosing that work. It found Mr. Abouammo not guilty on five counts of wire fraud or conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
After the verdict was read on Tuesday, three jurors answered questions from the defense team, saying they had deliberated the longest over the charge that Mr. Abouammo had acted as an agent of a foreign government. The jury reached a unanimous decision on that count Tuesday morning, the jurors said. One juror told Mr. Abouammo’s lawyers that she wished Twitter had “a little more responsibility for this.”
Mr. Abouammo, who worked at Twitter from 2013 to 2015, was arrested in 2019. Ali Alzabarah, another former Twitter employee who was also charged in the scheme, fled the country before he could be arrested. Several of the charges of which Mr. Abouammo was acquitted were related to communications between Mr. Alzabarah and Saudi officials, suggesting that the jury was not convinced that Mr. Abouammo had influenced his co-worker’s actions.
Prosecutors described Mr. Abouammo as a mole who had sold his access to personal user information to Saudi Arabia.
“Power. Greed. Lies. You heard this story, told by the evidence, here in this courtroom,” said Eric Cheng, an assistant U.S. attorney, during closing statements.
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